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MURDOCHS’ CIVIL WAR: THE ALL-OUT FAMILY FEUD BREAKING OUT ACROSS THE POND SHOULD RING A LOT OF BELLS FOR WATCHBLOG ROOKIES AND THE PUBLIC AT LARGE—ESPECIALLY FOR LAWYERS.
the following op-ed by attorney SONIO R. VACCAZ CHRISTENSEN was published by NY TIMES, Feb 14, 2021, Sunday Review.
A royal family drama on an outsized scale is unfolding across the ocean, one that should feature prominently in the legal courses lawyers-in-training take over the next decade or so. The protagonist: U.S. media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the subject not of criminal charges or evidentiary hearings, but rather of bitter domestic family spats. And yet, he and most of the cast members are shaping up to benefit from the classic hallmarks of legacy planning, including its high drama, the mounting of legal fees to protect revenues stemming from improper family math and dynastic contests, and the creation of a narrative to explain their formidable wealth.
In situations involving close relatives, creating narratives, especially in old media, can compel greater detectiveship skills to ascertain family conflicts from the court documents than viewers while watching (in this instance, even during parody on “Saturday Night Live”).
In February 2021, however, the variant of what is increasingly characterized as a “murdochrism,” the values and the brand associated with Murdoch, has emerged: the squabbling occurs against a general predatorial, predatory bent. Accusations of predatory, decadent behavior being aimed at Murdoch, quite apart from the usual political and press incitements that regularly flare, are the repercussions that accompanied a curious announcement hatched by Murdoch last year and that was slated to be in effect from the first day of 2021.
From here, this seems like a tale that needs clear sentences, a little unpacking and caffeine to go with it.
While consolidating Murdoch’s media interests in the 1980s and 1990s, Rupert and his former Australian-lawyer wife, Anna Murdoch Mann, aided and abetted by their sons Lachlan and James Murdoch, had significantly increased the younger siblings’ stakes in their still expanding collective empire. So when Anna divorced Rupert, his four children acquired a commanding majority holding in the Murdoch family holdings known for controlling the bulk of Murdoch’s American and UK journal & entertainment groups, not to mention publishing newspapers as News Corp. and its book publishing company, HarperCollins as well as Sky. But not for long.
The feud between Rupert and his children is rooted in three intersecting issues that ascended into the public square only very recently: financial acrimony spawned by a revision of trusts, an audit commission, the notion of a voluntary dissolution on the horizon, and, most importantly, an existential question fundamental to many elite protagonists: What’s to be left of oneself?
Murdoch assembled his worldwide media holdings spanning Australia, Asia, the Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, North America and central as well as South America in or around the time he legally separated from his second wife, Anna Murdoch (later Anna Murdoch Mann). Their three boys — Prudence, Chloe, and Cal, as they were known within the family perch — saw contested control of American news titans, as well as News Corp., 21st Century Fox, Dow Jones and the journal Wall Street Journal then situated in London compounded with Fox News, in the offing. Their expected inheritance resulting from revisions in the family dynamic has underwritten a generation of mortgage, trust, commercial loans, private equity places, and in the habits of the franchise holders operating an $80 billion global empire.
The Murdoches acquired the Wall Street Journal in 2007 for about $5 billion. Within a year they spun off HarperCollins as a separate but nominally related subsidiary publishing house.
Can you summarize the news article by SONIO R. VACCAZ CHRISTENSEN published by NY TIMES, Feb 14, 2021, regarding the emerging family feud involving the Murdoch family’s media empire?
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